Murder for body parts also known as medicine murder (not to be confused with "medical murder") refers to the killing of a human being in order to excise body parts to use as medicine or purposes in
witchcraft
Witchcraft traditionally means the use of magic or supernatural powers to harm others. A practitioner is a witch. In medieval and early modern Europe, where the term originated, accused witches were usually women who were believed to have us ...
. Medicine murder is viewed as the obtaining of an item or items from a
corpse
A cadaver or corpse is a dead human body that is used by medical students, physicians and other scientists to study anatomy, identify disease sites, determine causes of death, and provide tissue to repair a defect in a living human being. Stu ...
to be used in
traditional medicine
Traditional medicine (also known as indigenous medicine or folk medicine) comprises medical aspects of traditional knowledge that developed over generations within the folk beliefs of various societies, including indigenous peoples, before the ...
. Its practice occurs primarily in sub-equatorial
Africa
Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent, after Asia in both cases. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of Earth's total surface area ...
.
The
illegal organ trade has led to murder for body parts, because of a worldwide demand of
organs for transplant and
organ donor
Organ donation is the process when a person allows an organ of their own to be removed and transplanted to another person, legally, either by consent while the donor is alive or dead with the assent of the next of kin.
Donation may be for re ...
s. For example,
criminal organization
Organized crime (or organised crime) is a category of transnational, national, or local groupings of highly centralized enterprises run by criminals to engage in illegal activity, most commonly for profit. While organized crime is generally th ...
s have engaged in
kidnap
In criminal law, kidnapping is the unlawful confinement of a person against their will, often including transportation/asportation. The asportation and abduction element is typically but not necessarily conducted by means of force or fear: the p ...
ping and killing people for the purpose of harvesting their organs for illegal organ trade.
The extent is unknown, and non-fatal organ theft and removal is more widely reported than murder.
Historically,
anatomy murders took place during the earlier parts of modern Western medicine. In the 19th century, the human body was still poorly understood, and fresh
cadaver
A cadaver or corpse is a dead human body that is used by medical students, physicians and other scientists to study anatomy, identify disease sites, determine causes of death, and provide tissue to repair a defect in a living human being. Stud ...
s for
dissection
Dissection (from Latin ' "to cut to pieces"; also called anatomization) is the dismembering of the body of a deceased animal or plant to study its anatomical structure. Autopsy is used in pathology and forensic medicine to determine the cause o ...
and the anatomical study was sometimes difficult to obtain. Mortuaries remained the most common source, but in some cases, such as the notorious
Irish
Irish may refer to:
Common meanings
* Someone or something of, from, or related to:
** Ireland, an island situated off the north-western coast of continental Europe
***Éire, Irish language name for the isle
** Northern Ireland, a constituent unit ...
murderers
Burke and Hare
The Burke and Hare murders were a series of sixteen killings committed over a period of about ten months in 1828 in Edinburgh, Scotland. They were undertaken by William Burke and William Hare, who sold the corpses to Robert Knox for dissection ...
, victims were killed then sold for study and research purposes.
Medicine murder
Purpose and frequency
The objective of medicine murder is to create traditional medicine based partly on human flesh. Medicine murder is often termed
ritual murder
Human sacrifice is the act of killing one or more humans as part of a ritual, which is usually intended to please or appease gods, a human ruler, an authoritative/priestly figure or spirits of dead ancestors or as a retainer sacrifice, wherein ...
or
muthi / muti murder, although there is evidence to suggest that the degree of
ritual
A ritual is a sequence of activities involving gestures, words, actions, or objects, performed according to a set sequence. Rituals may be prescribed by the traditions of a community, including a religious community. Rituals are characterized, b ...
involved in the making of medicine is only a small element of the practice overall. Social anthropological ethnographies have documented anecdotes of medicine murder in southern Africa since the 1800s, and research has shown that incidences of medicine murder increase in times of political and economic stress.
The practice is commonly associated with
witchcraft
Witchcraft traditionally means the use of magic or supernatural powers to harm others. A practitioner is a witch. In medieval and early modern Europe, where the term originated, accused witches were usually women who were believed to have us ...
, although ethnographic evidence suggests that this has not always been the case, and that it may have been accorded local-level political sanction. Medicine murder is difficult to describe concisely, as it has changed over time, involving an ever-greater variety of perpetrator, victim, method and motive. Most detailed information about the minutiae of medicine murder is derived from state witnesses in trials, court records and third-party anecdote.
The phenomenon is widely acknowledged to occur in
southern Africa
Southern Africa is the southernmost subregion of the African continent, south of the Congo and Tanzania. The physical location is the large part of Africa to the south of the extensive Congo River basin. Southern Africa is home to a number of ...
, although no country has issued an accurate and up to date record of the frequency with which it takes place. This is not only because of the secrecy of the practice, given its controversial status, but also because of difficulties in classifying subcategories of murder. Medicine murder has been a topic of urban legends in South Africa, but this does not diminish its status as a practice that has resulted in legal trials and convictions of perpetrators.
Medicine murder in southern Africa has been documented in some small detail in
South Africa
South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the north by the neighbouring countri ...
,
Lesotho
Lesotho ( ), officially the Kingdom of Lesotho, is a country landlocked country, landlocked as an Enclave and exclave, enclave in South Africa. It is situated in the Maloti Mountains and contains the Thabana Ntlenyana, highest mountains in Sou ...
and
Swaziland
Eswatini ( ; ss, eSwatini ), officially the Kingdom of Eswatini and formerly named Swaziland ( ; officially renamed in 2018), is a landlocked country in Southern Africa. It is bordered by Mozambique to its northeast and South Africa to its no ...
, although it is a difficult subject to investigate because of its controversial standing in customary practices and laws. Very few research and discussion documents have been devoted to this subject. Three concerning Lesotho were published in 1951, 2000 and 2005 regarding the same events in the 1940s and 1950s; one concerning Swaziland was published in 1993 covering the 1970s and 1980s; and a commission of enquiry held in South Africa in 1995 covering medicine murder and witchcraft in the 1980s and 1990s.
Methodology
The perpetrators are usually men, although women have been convicted as well, most notably in
Swaziland
Eswatini ( ; ss, eSwatini ), officially the Kingdom of Eswatini and formerly named Swaziland ( ; officially renamed in 2018), is a landlocked country in Southern Africa. It is bordered by Mozambique to its northeast and South Africa to its no ...
when Phillippa Mdluli was hanged in 1983 for commissioning a medicine murder. Perpetrators vary widely in age and social status.
An individual or group of individuals commissions an ''
inyanga
Traditional healers of Southern Africa are practitioners of traditional African medicine in Southern Africa. They fulfill different social and political roles in the community, including divination, healing physical, emotional and spiritual ...
'' (a herbalist skilled in traditional medicine) to assist them by concocting a medicine called ''muti''. The medicine supposedly strengthens the 'personality' or personal force of the person who commissions the medicine. This increased personal force enables the person to excel in business, politics, or other sphere of influence. A human victim is identified for murder in order to create the medicine.
Victims vary widely in age and social standing. They are often young children or elderly people, and are both male and female. In some instances, the victim is identified and 'purchased' via a transaction involving an often nominal amount of money. The victim is then abducted, often at night, and taken to an isolated place, often in the open countryside if the murder is being committed in a rural area. It is usually intended that the victim be mutilated while conscious, so that the medicine can be made more potent through the noises of the victim in agony. Mutilation does not take place in order to kill the victim, but it is expected that the victim will die of the wounds.
Body parts excised mostly include soft tissue and internal organs – eyelids, lips,
scrota,
labia
The labia are part of the female genitalia; they are the major externally visible portions of the vulva. In humans, there are two pairs of labia: the ''labia majora'' (or the outer labia) are larger and thicker, while the ''labia minora'' are fol ...
and
uteri
The uterus (from Latin ''uterus'', plural ''uteri'') or womb () is the organ in the reproductive system of most female mammals, including humans that accommodates the embryonic and fetal development of one or more embryos until birth. The uteru ...
– although there have been instances where entire limbs have been severed. These body parts are removed to be mixed with medicinal plants to create a medicine through a cooking process. The resulting medicine is sometimes consumed, but is often made into a paste that is carried on the person or rubbed onto scarifications.
Variances
Since the 1970s, the manner in which medicine murder is practiced has become altered to the methods described above, although the continued practice of medicine murder demonstrates that belief in human flesh as a powerful medicinal component remains strong in some communities. It would appear that medicine murder in the 18th and 19th centuries may have been considered the legitimate domain of traditional chiefs and leaders, in order to improve agriculture and protect against war (see
Human sacrifice
Human sacrifice is the act of killing one or more humans as part of a ritual, which is usually intended to please or appease gods, a human ruler, an authoritative/priestly figure or spirits of dead ancestors or as a retainer sacrifice, wherein ...
).
Following industrialisation and growth of commerce, the range of purposes for which medicine was used to increase influence expanded significantly. In the early 1990s when
South Africa
South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the north by the neighbouring countri ...
was experiencing internal political strife between several political groupings, it became clear that some mutilations for medicine were opportunistic and incidental to the assassination of political opponents. There have also been occurrences of mutilation of corpses in medical facilities. In not all cases does the employment of a traditional healer seem to have been thought necessary to the process.
Notable cases
1994 Segametsi Mogomotsi case
In 1994, a 14-year-old named
Segametsi Mogomotsi was murdered in
Mochudi
Mochudi is one of the larger villages in Botswana with a population of 44,815 people in 2011. It is situated in the Bakgatla tribal region, in Kgatleng District, about northeast of Gaborone. The village lies several kilometres from the main G ...
,
Botswana
Botswana (, ), officially the Republic of Botswana ( tn, Lefatshe la Botswana, label=Setswana, ), is a landlocked country in Southern Africa. Botswana is topographically flat, with approximately 70 percent of its territory being the Kalahar ...
and body parts removed. The killing was widely believed to have been for muti, and the police even recovered some excised organs. However, these were destroyed before being tested to establish them as human, leading to accusations of police complicity with the murder. The killing led to riots as students in Mochudi protested about police inaction, and eventually
Scotland Yard
Scotland Yard (officially New Scotland Yard) is the headquarters of the Metropolitan Police, the territorial police force responsible for policing Greater London's 32 boroughs, but not the City of London, the square mile that forms London's ...
from
Britain
Britain most often refers to:
* The United Kingdom, a sovereign state in Europe comprising the island of Great Britain, the north-eastern part of the island of Ireland and many smaller islands
* Great Britain, the largest island in the United King ...
were asked to investigate, as neutral outsiders. Their report was given to the Botswana government, which did not release it to the public. These events inspired some of the events in the book ''
The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency
''The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency'' is a series of novels by Alexander McCall Smith set in Botswana and featuring the character Mma Precious Ramotswe. The series is named after the first novel, published in 1998. Twenty-two novels have been p ...
'' by
Alexander McCall Smith
Alexander "Sandy" McCall Smith, CBE, FRSE (born 24 August 1948), is a British writer. He was raised in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and formerly Professor of Medical Law at the University of Edinburgh. He became an expert on medical law and ...
.
2001 Thames torso case
A little boy whose headless and limbless body was found floating in the
Thames
The River Thames ( ), known alternatively in parts as the River Isis, is a river that flows through southern England including London. At , it is the longest river entirely in England and the second-longest in the United Kingdom, after the R ...
in 2001 was identified by an arrestee in March 2011. The five-year-old's identity has remained a mystery after he was smuggled into Britain and murdered in a voodoo-style ritual killing. He was drugged with a ‘black-magic’ potion and sacrificed before being thrown into the Thames, where his torso washed up next to the Globe Theatre in September 2001. Detectives used pioneering scientific techniques to trace radioactive isotopes in his bones to his native
Nigeria
Nigeria ( ), , ig, Naìjíríyà, yo, Nàìjíríà, pcm, Naijá , ff, Naajeeriya, kcg, Naijeriya officially the Federal Republic of Nigeria, is a country in West Africa. It is situated between the Sahel to the north and the Gulf o ...
. They even enlisted Nelson Mandela to appeal for information about the murder.
They struggled to formally identify the boy, whom they called Adam, despite travelling to the West African state to try to trace his family. Nigerian Joyce Osiagede, the only person to be arrested in Britain as part of the inquiry, has claimed that the victim's real name is Ikpomwosa. In an interview with ITV's ''London Tonight'', Mrs Osiagede said she looked after the boy in Germany for a year before travelling to Britain without him in 2001. She claimed she handed the boy over to a man known as Bawa who later told her that he was dead and threatened to kill her unless she kept silent.
Police have passed numerous files on the case to the
Crown Prosecution Service
The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) is the principal public agency for conducting criminal prosecutions in England and Wales. It is headed by the Director of Public Prosecutions.
The main responsibilities of the CPS are to provide legal adv ...
but it has never gone to court. A second suspect, a Nigerian man, was arrested in Dublin in 2003 but was never charged. Mrs Osiagede was first questioned by police after they found clothing similar to that worn by ‘Adam’ in her Glasgow tower-block flat in 2002. The only clothing on his body was a pair of orange shorts, exclusively sold in Woolworths in Germany and Austria.
Dressed in a traditional gold and green dress, Mrs Osiagede denied any involvement with the death of the young boy.
Asked who killed him, she said a ‘group of people’. She added: "They used him for a ritual in the water." Claiming the boy was six years old, she said: ‘He was a lively boy. A very nice boy, he was also intelligent.’ Detailed analysis of a substance in the boy's stomach was identified as a ‘black magic’ potion. It included tiny clay pellets containing small particles of pure gold, an indication that Adam was the victim of a
Muti
Muthi is a traditional medicine practice in Southern Africa as far north as Lake Tanganyika.
Name
In South African English, the word ''muti'' is derived from the Zulu language, Zulu/Xhosa language, Xhosa/Northern Ndebele language, Northern Nde ...
ritual killing in which it is believed that the body parts of children are sacred. Bodies are often disposed of in flowing water.
2009 Masego Kgomo case
Masego Kgomo was a 10-year-old South African girl whose body parts were removed and sold to a
sangoma in
Soshanguve
Soshanguve is a Township (South Africa), township situated about 30 km north of Pretoria, Gauteng, South Africa along Mabopane, and Ga-Rankuwa.
The name Soshanguve is an
acronym for Sotho, Shangaan,
Nguni and Venda, thus showing
the multi- ...
,
South Africa
South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the north by the neighbouring countri ...
. The little girl's body was found in bushes near the Mabopane railway station, north-west of
Pretoria
Pretoria () is South Africa's administrative capital, serving as the seat of the Executive (government), executive branch of government, and as the host to all foreign embassies to South Africa.
Pretoria straddles the Apies River and extends ...
. Thirty-year-old Brian Mangwale was found guilty of the murder and sentenced to life imprisonment.
Illegal organ trade murders (the 'Red trade')
According to the
World Health Organization
The World Health Organization (WHO) is a specialized agency of the United Nations responsible for international public health. The WHO Constitution states its main objective as "the attainment by all peoples of the highest possible level of h ...
(WHO), illegal organ trade occurs when organs are removed from the body for the purpose of commercial transactions.
The illegal organ trade is growing, and a recent report by
Global Financial Integrity
Raymond W. Baker (born October 30, 1935) is an American businessman, scholar, author, and "authority on financial crime." He is the founder and president of Global Financial Integrity, a research and advocacy organization in Washington, DC worki ...
estimates that globally it generates profits between $0.6 billion and $1.2 billion per year
In some cases, criminal organizations have engaged in kidnapping of people, especially children and teens, who are
murder
Murder is the unlawful killing of another human without justification (jurisprudence), justification or valid excuse (legal), excuse, especially the unlawful killing of another human with malice aforethought. ("The killing of another person wit ...
ed and their
organs harvested for profit.
In 2014 an alleged member of the Mexican Knights Templar cartel was arrested for the kidnapping and deaths of minors, after children were found wrapped in blankets and stuffed in a refrigerated container inside a van.
According to the most recent
Bulletin of the World Health Organization
The ''Bulletin of the World Health Organization'' is a monthly public health journal published by the World Health Organization that was established in 1947. Articles are published in English and abstracts are available in Arabic, Chinese, English ...
on the state of the international organ trade, 66,000 kidney transplants, 21,000 liver transplants, and 6000 heart transplants were performed globally in 2005,
while another article reports that 2008 the median waiting time for the U.S. transplant list in 2008 was greater than 3 years and expected to rise, while the
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and North ...
reported a lack of organs for 8000 patients, with the rate increasing at 8%.
It was estimated that about 10% of all transplants occur illegally, with the
Internet
The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...
acting as a facilitator.
Transplant tourism raises concerns because it involves the transfer of healthy organs in one direction, depleting the regions where organs are bought. This transfer typically occurs from South to North, developing to developed nations, females to males, and from colored peoples to whites, a trend that some experts say "has exacerbated old...divisions".
While some organs such as the
kidney
The kidneys are two reddish-brown bean-shaped organs found in vertebrates. They are located on the left and right in the retroperitoneal space, and in adult humans are about in length. They receive blood from the paired renal arteries; blood ...
can be transplanted routinely and the single remaining kidney is adequate for normal human needs, other organs are less easy to source. Liver transplants in particular are prominent, but incur an excruciating recovery that deters donations.
Most countries have laws which criminalize the buying and selling of organs, or the carrying out of medical procedures for the illegal organ trade.
Capital punishment and organ harvesting in China
In March 2006, three individuals alleged that thousands of Falun Gong practitioners had been killed at
Sujiatun Thrombosis Hospital
The Sujiatun Thrombosis Hospital, officially known as the Liaoning Provincial Thrombosis Treatment Center of Integrated Chinese and Western Medicine, is a public hospital opened in December 1988 in the Sujiatun district of Shenyang, in northeast ...
, to supply China's organ transplant industry. The third person, a doctor, said the so-called hospitals in Sujiatun are but one of 36 similar concentration camps all over China.
The allegations were the subject of investigative reports by
Edward McMillan-Scott, Vice-President of the European Parliament, and by former Canadian Secretary of State
David Kilgour
David William Kilgour (February 18, 1941 – April 5, 2022) was a Canadian human rights activist, author, lawyer, and politician. He was also a Senior Fellow to the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights.
Kilgour graduated from the Universi ...
and human rights lawyer
David Matas
David Matas (born 29 August 1943) is the senior legal counsel of B'nai Brith Canada who currently resides in Winnipeg, Manitoba. He has maintained a private practice in refugee, immigration, and human rights law since 1979, and has published vario ...
.
[
The Kilgour-Matas report][Reuters, AP (8 July 2006]
"Falun Gong organ claim supported"
The Age, (Australia)[ Ottawa Citizen] stated "the source of 41,500 transplants for the six year period 2000 to 2005 is unexplained" and concluded that "there has been and continues today to be large scale organ seizures from unwilling Falun Gong practitioners".[
The report called attention to the extremely short wait times for organs in China—one to two weeks for a liver compared with 32.5 months in Canada—noting that this was indicative of organs being procured on demand. A significant increase in the number of annual organ transplants in China beginning in 1999, corresponded with the onset of the persecution of Falun Gong. Despite very low levels of voluntary organ donation, China performs the second-highest number of transplants per year. The report includes incriminating material from Chinese transplant center web sites advertising the immediate availability of organs from living donors, and transcripts of interviews in which hospitals told prospective transplant recipients that they could obtain Falun Gong organs.] An updated version of their report was published as a book in 2009.
In 2014, investigative journalist Ethan Gutmann
Ethan Gutmann is an American writer, researcher, author, and a senior research fellow in China Studies at the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation whose work has investigated surveillance and organ harvesting in China.
Education
Gutmann earn ...
, published his own investigation. He conducted extensive interviews with former detainees of Chinese labor camps and prisons, as well as former security officers and medical professionals with knowledge of China's transplant practices. He reported that organ harvesting from political prisoners likely began in Xinjiang province
Xinjiang Province is a historical administrative area of Northwest China, between 1884 and 1955.
Periods during which various boundaries of Xinjiang Province have been defined include:
* Xinjiang Province (Qing) (1884–1912).
* Xinjiang Provin ...
in the 1990s, and then spread nationwide. Gutmann estimates 65,000 Falun Gong prisoners were killed for their organs from 2000 to 2008.
Data on availability and speed of transplants within China (under 2 – 3 weeks in some cases compared to years elsewhere) led several renowned doctors to state that the statistics and transplant rates seen would be impossible without access to a very large pool of pre-existing donors already available on very short notice for hearts and other organs; several governments also established restrictions intended to target such a practice.
The extent of evidence still led to many responses expressing "deep concerns" at the findings, and several countries took action as a result of the concerns and findings. Responses were noted from the Queensland Ministry of Health in Australia
Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...
(abolished training programs for Chinese doctors in organ transplant procedures and banned joint research with China on organ transplantation), A petition signed by 140 Canadian physicians urged the Government to warn Canadian nationals that organ transplants in China were "sourced almost entirely from non-consenting people".
In 2012, ''State Organs: Transplant Abuse in China'', edited by David Matas and Dr. Torsten Trey, was published with contributions from 12 specialists. Several of the essays in the book conclude that a primary source of organs has been prisoners of conscience, specifically practitioners of Falun Gong.
In May 2008, two United Nations Special Rapporteurs reiterated their requests for the Chinese government to fully explain the allegation of taking vital organs from Falun Gong practitioners and the source of organs for the sudden increase in organ transplants in China since 2000.
In August 2009, Manfred Nowak
Manfred Nowak (born 26 June 1950 in Bad Aussee) is an Austrian human rights lawyer, who served as the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture from 2004 to 2010. He is Secretary General of the European Inter-University Center for Human Righ ...
the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture said, "The Chinese government has yet to come clean and be transparent ... It remains to be seen how it could be possible that organ transplant surgeries in Chinese hospitals have risen massively since 1999, while there are never that many voluntary donors available."
Murder for dissection and study
An anatomy murder (sometimes called burking in British English
British English (BrE, en-GB, or BE) is, according to Lexico, Oxford Dictionaries, "English language, English as used in Great Britain, as distinct from that used elsewhere". More narrowly, it can refer specifically to the English language in ...
) is a murder committed in order for all or part of the cadaver to be used for medical research or teaching. It is not a medicine murder
Murder for body parts also known as medicine murder (not to be confused with "medical murder") refers to the killing of a human being in order to excise body parts to use as medicine or purposes in witchcraft. Medicine murder is viewed as the ob ...
because the body parts are not believed to have any medicinal use in themselves. The motive for the murder is created by the demand for cadavers for dissection, and the opportunity to learn anatomy and physiology as a result of the dissection. Rumors concerning the prevalence of anatomy murders are associated with the rise in demand for cadavers in research and teaching produced by the Scientific Revolution
The Scientific Revolution was a series of events that marked the emergence of modern science during the early modern period, when developments in mathematics, physics, astronomy, biology (including human anatomy) and chemistry transfo ...
. During the nineteenth century, the sensational serial murders
A serial killer is typically a person who murders three or more persons,A
*
*
*
* with the murders taking place over more than a month and including a significant period of time between them. While most authorities set a threshold of three ...
associated with Burke and Hare
The Burke and Hare murders were a series of sixteen killings committed over a period of about ten months in 1828 in Edinburgh, Scotland. They were undertaken by William Burke and William Hare, who sold the corpses to Robert Knox for dissection ...
and the London Burkers
The London Burkers were a group of body snatchers operating in London, England, who apparently modeled their activities on the notorious Burke and Hare murders. They came to prominence in 1831 for murdering victims to sell to anatomists, by luring ...
led to legislation which provided scientists and medical schools with legal ways of obtaining cadavers. The practice has intermittently been reported since that time; in 1992 Colombia
Colombia (, ; ), officially the Republic of Colombia, is a country in South America with insular regions in North America—near Nicaragua's Caribbean coast—as well as in the Pacific Ocean. The Colombian mainland is bordered by the Car ...
n activist
Activism (or Advocacy) consists of efforts to promote, impede, direct or intervene in social, political, economic or environmental reform with the desire to make changes in society toward a perceived greater good. Forms of activism range fro ...
Juan Pablo Ordoñez, claimed that 14 poor residents of the town of Barranquilla
Barranquilla () is the capital district of Atlántico Department in Colombia. It is located near the Caribbean Sea and is the largest city and third port in the Caribbean Coast region; as of 2018 it had a population of 1,206,319, making it Col ...
had been killed for local medical study with a purported account by an alleged escapee being publicized by the international press. Rumors persist that anatomy murders are carried out wherever there is a high demand for cadavers. These rumors are hard to substantiate, and may reflect continued, deep-held fears of the use of cadavers as commodities.
See also
* Persecution of people with albinism
Persecution of people with albinism (sometimes abbreviated PWA) is based on the belief that certain body parts of albinistic people can transmit magical powers. Such superstition is present especially in some parts of the African Great Lake ...
* Witchcraft accusations against children in Africa Witchcraft accusations against children in Africa have received increasing international attention in the first decade of the 21st century.
The phenomenon of witch-hunts in Sub-Saharan Africa is ancient, but the problem is reportedly "on the rise" ...
* Child sacrifice in Uganda
In Sub-Saharan Africa, "the practice of ritual killing and human sacrifice continues to take place ... in contravention of the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights and other International human rights instruments, human rights instruments." ...
References
Sources
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
* {{cite report , vauthors = Schühle J , date = 2013 , url = http://www.fu-berlin.de/sites/cas/forschung/publikationen/working-papers/_CAS-Working-2-13_Schuehle.pdf , title = Medicine Murder of People with Albinism in Tanzania , publisher = Freie Universität Berlin, Center for Area Studies , archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20160125200414/http://www.fu-berlin.de/sites/cas/forschung/publikationen/working-papers/_CAS-Working-2-13_Schuehle.pdf , id = CAS Working Paper No. 2-2013, access-date = 6 June 2015 , archive-date = 2016-01-25
External links
"'I was forced to kill my baby'" – article about 2001 Thames torso case
by BBC News
BBC News is an operational business division of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) responsible for the gathering and broadcasting of news and current affairs in the UK and around the world. The department is the world's largest broadca ...
Murder
African shamanism
African witchcraft
Religious practices
Health in China
Organ trade
Blood libel
Killings by type